Thursday, September 04, 2008

Another round

I had intended to move away from history, but wound up starting another round of it. I started in late medieval times, mostly just checking to see which of the centuries could be advanced a bit. Only one of them, but the next round I will should be able to do more.

For the 16th century, I don't have much on the United States at all; This is the period of mostly exploration of the coast, to which I paid less attention than I might have, and has gone rather hazy in my memory. I'm doing a bit better in China, the period of the Ming dynasty, and in India, when the Mughal empire was growing. I really can't do much in Indonesia without the Dutch and the Portuguese, and it looks to be a while before I get to either of them in much detail.

For the 17th century, in the United States I'm dealing with the early colonial period. I have Brazil as a Portuguese colony, and I'm not yet much interested in it. Russia was starting to expand. In South Asia, including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the Mughal empire was at its height, but the British were starting to exert influence. China is concerned with the transition between the Ming, and the Qin (Manchu) dynasty which followed. Examination of Africa would be beginning, but there's really not much content to it yet. Basic connections to Anthropology and personal studies have been made.

For the 18th century, The history of Mexico is somewhat interesting. Germany, before the 19th century, is somewhat chaotic. Japan starts to be of some interest, but this was mostly the feudal period of isolation. The Philippines have to be better connected to Spain for me to extract much of this period, and I'm not terribly interested in Vietnam before the French period. Nigeria is mostly set aside. I am starting to link details of social structure and change to these periods, and Connections to most of the institutions have been extended.

I started to work on the history of sociology and the history of peoples, but I realized that the history of sociology is rather thin without a little more reference to peoples, and the history of peoples is a little thin without reference to particular peoples. When I got as far as Western civilization, I decided to back off and try this again later.

The program of connection of individuals to peoples is progressing; This is now about 2/3 done, and the next level of detail involves things such as Western Civilization and Asiatic peoples. Connections of individuals to African peoples or American Indian peoples is practically nonexistent. One of the things I want the knowledge base to do is to point to where the gaps are so I can fill them. I'm not quite there yet. Connection of individuals to Western civilization is about 1/3 third done, and that's involved mostly a review of what I have already accomplished. I've caught up to that part of the program so I can start extending and adding to those connections.

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